


HSO 2012 drabbles

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Drabble Collection, Eridan and Feferi don't actually get together, Eridan just tries very hard to impress Feferi and Feferi is unimpressed, Existential Angst, Fantastic Racism, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, HSO, Homestuck Shipping Olympics, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suffocation, Legends, Multi, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2018-03-14 08:17:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3403493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi has to prevent Aradia and Vriska from killing each other on a road trip -- The Handmaid meets the Condesce in the depths of space -- A noble fish scientist valiantly protects and falls in love with his fish princess</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On the Road Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted for HSO 2012, moving it here for archive purposes.  
> The prompt was "Terezi ♣ Aradia/Vriska - Road trip and heist".

Aradia checked the map, then peered around the seat in front of her at the road ahead. “Okay. We’ll be coming up on a series of intersections in a minute. Turn left at the first stoplight.”

Vriska, sitting behind the wheel, made a noncommittal noise that could have meant just about anything.

All Terezi could do was sigh and hope that Vriska wouldn’t do anything intentionally antagonistic this time.

It was, as she well knew, a vain hope.

As they approached the intersection, Aradia leaned forward and said, “Yes. This right here. Turn left. _Left_. Do you have that, Vriska? Turn _left_ \- “

Vriska ignored her completely. With a grin exposing all of her very sharp, very bright teeth, she floored the rental car. It shot forward, cut off a green pickup truck, barrelled straight through a red light, and kept going.

 _”Vriska!”_ Aradia shouted, at the same time as Terezi growled, _"Vriska - “_

“What?” Vriska asked with mock innocence. “I’m just taking a shortcut! I know where we’re going, and it’s this way anyway. Who wants to muck around zigzagging through all these little streets?”

 _“You_ do, apparently,” snarled Aradia. “This area is an absolute _mess_ of dead ends and one-way streets. It’s going to take me ages to get us going back in the right direction, thanks to you!”

“Heeeeeeeey,” Vriska said, drawing the word out in her grating, singsong way, “think of it as an _adventure_ , Megido. I thought you _liked_ those. I’m doing this for you!” She turned around and flashed Aradia her trademark Serket smile, specifically designed to be as smug and annoying as possible.

Aradia was just about to snap back a retort when Terezi decided she’d had enough, and reached over and turned on the radio. She spun the volume up until it drowned out Vriska and Aradia’s voices. They couldn’t argue over a screaming guitar that literally shook the entire car.

Terezi settled back into her seat. This was going to be one long road trip.

***

It had seemed like a good idea when it was first proposed. Aradia and Vriska had been increasingly at each others’ throats lately, with what had originally been petty differences escalating to the point where Terezi had to end nearly every FLARP session early to prevent one of them from getting maimed. Last game, she’d had to physically pull them apart, and she didn’t even manage that before Vriska had gotten a black eye and Aradia had long bloody red gashes gouged into her arm. Terezi had cancelled all FLARP sessions indefinitely and tried to mediate every interaction of theirs since then. Their fights had simmered down to sidelong insults and dirty looks - an improvement, but unlikely to last.

The World Jewelry Convention could not have come at a better time.

The very idea, of course, was illegal. It was so _flagrantly_ illegal that Terezi was surprised that even Vriska had suggested it. But it took immediate hold. Vriska was excited for a large-scale heist. Aradia was excited for a great and daring adventure. It was the first time they had agreed so enthusiastically about anything in months.

“Besides,” Aradia said, when Terezi rejected the idea, “you know what’s going up for auction there? The Irons of Coronado! A golden icon in the shape of the Sufferer’s symbol, studded with rubies and emeralds! It’s of great historical significance, but it was stolen from a temple sweeps ago! It shouldn’t be in some private collector’s hive; it belongs in a museum! If that’s not justice, then what is?”

 _”Uuuuuuuugh_ , Megidork,” Vriska cut in, before Terezi had a chance to respond. “Can you get any _lamer?_ It’s almost as if you - “

Terezi surreptitiously kicked her in the shin, then agreed that, together, they could pull off the greatest heist ever.

***

Terezi became significantly less enthusiastic about the idea when she learned that the convention was more than a thousand miles away. The fact that was far away wasn’t much of a problem. The prospect of getting both Aradia and Vriska there, without any serious injuries, rather was.

They’d unanimously decided that flying wouldn’t work. Even with Vriska’s mind-control powers, sneaking stolen jewels and priceless historical artifacts onto a plane would be next to impossible, if not just impossible. Train was suggested, then discarded. After stealing the jewels, it was likely that the three of them would need to make a very speedy getaway, and the fact that trains left from fixed stops on strict schedules worked against them here.

That left a road trip.

All of them agreed on it, but Terezi had serious concerns about what being cooped up in a car together for several days would do to Aradia and Vriska’s minds. Still, a car had one major advantage that planes and trains didn’t.

If Aradia and vriska’s constant fighting became too irritating, she could always pull over and make them walk for a little while.

***

The problems, naturally, began even before they’d left.

Terezi walked out of the store with the last things they’d need for the trip to find Vriska in the driver’s seat, Aradia glaring at her, and the scent of anger everywhere.

Terezi sighed in annoyance. “What is it now?”

Aradia jerked her head towards the car. “Serket here seems to think she has the God-given right to drive, and no one has any claim otherwise.”

 _Oh, Troll Jegus_ , Terezi thought. _Here we go_...

For her part, Vriska sat behind the wheel, arms folded, making it clear that she had no intention of moving anywhere. “And you call _me_ petty, Megido. Really.”

“Petty? You don’t even have your driver’s license!”

Vriska bristled. “Yes, I do!”

“Mind-controlling your instructor into passing you doesn’t count!”

“Come _on_ , Megido, stop being such a whiny tightass.”

“Rather that than a sociopathic borderline-lunatic! At least _I_ can promise that I won’t get us all killed in an impromptu drag race!”

Terezi just rubbed her face in her palms in frustration. “If you two don’t shut up and work something out, _I’m_ driving. So unless you want the blind girl at the wheel, figure something out without killing each other!”

Eventually they did manage to reach a compromise. Vriska would drive there while Aradia navigated; Aradia would drive getaway. Terezi also insisted on always riding shotgun, just to make extra sure that conflicts were kept to a minimum.

She’d had to whack them both over the head a few times with her cane, but eventually they did manage to settle into a grudging cooperation. The trip was on.

As they left, Vriska humming an annoying song and Aradia pointedly ignoring her, Terezi began to think that this didn’t _have_ to be an unmitigated disaster, after all. Road trips took tolerance; heists took teamwork. It could happen.

Maybe.


	2. Between Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted for HSO 2012, moving it here for archive purposes.  
> The prompt was "Condesce ♠ Handmaid - Philosophical/existentialist fiction + space opera".

She floated in space. Her hair, let loose from its usual bun, spread out like a many-tentacled beast with a mind of its own. She may have appreciated the irony of this - a lowblooded slave, mimicking the horrorterrors of royalty - if she had ever cared about that sort of thing.

The Handmaid had never cared about much, really.

She had long since learned to ignore the burning in her lungs that would have spelled death for any other troll. It was a background pain, uninteresting and unimportant. She knew she wouldn’t suffocate because she knew she couldn’t die. Any further dwelling on it would be pointless.

Besides, the pain was an acceptable trade-off for the slightly decreased unbearability of her existence that floating out among the stars lent her. Doing nothing out here was at least preferable to doing nothing in her small sickly-green cell. Assignments from her _employer_ were the only breaks in the interminable monotony, and she hadn’t had an assignment in hundreds of sweeps.

She considered finding a nearby planet and wreaking some havoc there, just for something to do. In the end she decided against it. Maybe later.

After all, she had all the time in the universe.

***

Her Imperious Condescension stood on the bridge of her flagship, staring out through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced-glass windows and into the inky depths beyond.

There were whispers that she was getting old. That she was getting desperate. They said that she was trying to keep hold on an empire that would not be hers much longer. Rumors spread, telling of a young Tyrian back on Alternia, who would inevitably wrest from her the trident and the crown.

The Condesce paid them no mind, except to occasionally execute those she found spreading such rumors.

She wasn’t going anywhere. The Condesce was quite fond of life. She would hardly let go of it any time soon. Certainly not with so many stars out there left unconquered.

Those stars, after all, were _hers_. Maybe not yet, but in the end, they would be.

She had time. She could wait.

The Condesce looked out at the stars and laughed.

***

Something was moving in space.

Normally, the Handmaid would have taken no notice whatsoever. Though from any terrestrial standpoint the void beyond seemed frozen and unchanging, from millenia of experience the Handmaid had learned that it was really a rather active place. Everything was in constant motion: moons orbited planets, planets orbited stars, stars spun and rotated around the centers of galaxies. Stars exploded, pulsars whirled, galaxies hurtled and crashed and cannibilized each other.

Celestial obejcts were always in motion. They gave the impression that they weren’t because they were also always silent.

The Handmaid liked that.

They were also always very, very far away from each other.

This one caught the Handmaid’s attention because it was suddenly very close.

The Handmaid knew this stretch of space. She knew many stretches of space. Not all of them. Space was a big place. But she knew this one and knew it was empty, empty for light-years in all directions. Nothing was supposed to be here.

She spun around, focusing on the movement. It was too far away to easily distinguish from the speckled background of stars, but the preternatural clarity of deep space gave just enough of an edge that the Handmaid could see that it was red. Bright, deep, violent red.

The Handmaid flickered, blue red green, and warped away.

***

She reappeared an infinitesimal fraction of a second later, only several thousand miles away from the moving red thing. From here she could see it up close.

She recoiled the second she realized what it was.

It was a starship. The most famous starship in existence. Every troll, even the millenia-old time-traveling demons of destruction, recognized this starship.

Even if it were somehow to slip their minds, the name was emblazoned proudly on the side.

The Handmaid was staring at the Battleship Condescension.

In the far, far back of her mind, a tiny flicker of emotion turned on. As much as could be possible in her current state, she was taken aback.

When her _employer_ sent her off on an assignment, he gave her free reign to kill and destroy just as much as she pleased. But there had always been a few rules, and one special rule drilled white-hot into her mind: she was never, under any circumstances whatsoever, to harm Her Imperious Condescension.

The Handmaid didn’t know why, but it had never mattered. She was not curious. She did not wonder. She did not ask questions. She did what she was told by her employer and rained a holocaust over everyone else. And over the course of her life, she had never come close enough in contact with the Empress for even that rule to affect her.

But here she was now, nearly face-to-face with the only other troll in the universe who experienced a similar functional immortality.

The Handmaid felt no sense of kinship with the Empress. No sense of belonging, no feeling of finding a kindred spirit.

What she felt, as she watched the Battleship pass, was a slow-building, burning rage.

The Handmaid had been a slave for her entire life. She had been hatched and raised for no other purpose. She had spent her whole life either imprisoned in a cell, or floating in space, and she remembered, with [perfect clarity, every single second of it. Her only breaks were to do her _employer’s_ bidding, and she had come to look forward to them, to desperately snatch the chance to get out and do something, _anything_ other than just sit and wait and tear her mind apart from the inside. She relished the death. Relished the destruction. Because her only other choice was to sit, and think, and slowly, tortuously, drive herself mad.

She had lived for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of lifetimes. She had outlived species. She had outlived planets. She had outlived some stars. Her employer kept her immortal, and made very sure that is was impossible for her to die. She knew. She had tried, so many times, to find a way out of this hateful existence, and the fact that she was still ruminating on this was very clear proof that she had failed.

It had never, in her entire life, even occurred to the Handmaid to consider her immortality a gift.

The Empress, though, with immortality, had inherited everything the Handmaid would never have. She had power and freedom. She ruled an empire that spanned hundreds of planets. Anything she could ever want, she could, and did, easily get. For the Empress, immortality was a gift, the best gift she could ever ask for, the easiest gift she would ever receive.

The Handmaid hated her.

The Empress would never have to tear open her veins and paint the walls of her cell, just to try to cover up that horrible green for a while. She would never float alone in space for sweeps because any other option was a fraction more unbearable. She would never have to get creative, gouging out her own eye with a spoon to try to stab her own brain because anything else that might be possibly used as a weapon had been taken away.

When the Empress looked out at the stars, she laughed.

The Handmaid suddenly wanted to cause great harm to the Empress.

She was more than capable of it.

And, now that she had a chance, and a reason, the rule rose back into her mind.

She considered it, briefly.

But she was the Demoness of death. She killed who she wanted. No mortal laws had ever stopped her, because there was no punishment mortal arbiters of justice could inflict on her.

If her employer wanted her to follow a rule, he had to enforce it.

And the Handmaid was already living in an unadulterated personal hell. There was literally nothing that he could do that could make her life worse.

When she reached that conclusion, her decision on a course of action was really quite easy.

She shimmered, blue red green, and warped onto the Battleship.

***

The Condesce walked down the halls of her ship. Lost in thought, she barely heard the telltale _swish_ of displaced air that announced a preternatural arrival.

But she heard the snarl, and the sparking of magic. She turned around.

A wild demoness, a blazing, brutal legend with no conscience and no law, stood facing her. Her black eyes were livid; her tangled mass of hair crackled with red and green flame.

Many trolls didn’t believe in the Demoness anymore. The Condesce had lived long enough to know what fools they were.

Slowly, she smiled.


	3. Long Ago...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted for HSO 2012, moving it here for archive purposes.  
> The prompt was "Eridan<3Feferi - Creation Myth & Sea Story".

Long ago, all life on Alternia lived in the ocean. The land was barren and dry, full of nothing but cracked gray rock. The seas, though, teemed with life of all shapes and sizes and colors - happy, playful dolphins, wise whales that would fill your entire field of vision, bright colorful corals and even brighter, more colorful fish that darted and dove between them. Cuttlefish and nautili and adorable little hermit crabs, in spiral shells that were beautiful and much-prized among the trolls.

Because there were trolls, too, back then - but all trolls were seadwellers, and were all born with fins and gills and the ability to swim like the fish they lived among. They all had purple blood, except for the empress of them all, and her heiress, who were graced with the color of royal tyrian.

The empress had ruled for longer than anyone could remember, and loved her power. It did not seem that the Heiress would ever ascend.

There was another troll, a prince of the purple-bloods, who was much favored by the Heiress. He was proficient in the arts of the whitest sciences, and everyone adored him and wanted to fill all of his quadrants. But he had eyes only for the Heiress.

One day, he came upon the Heiress and saw that she had been crying.

He immediately swam over to her and took her in his arms, asking her what was wrong.

“Oh,” she said, “It’s terrible! Yesterday, I overheard the Empress plotting to kill me, so I could never be a threat to her and she could go on ruling forever!”

The prince was deeply disturbed by this, but valiantly said, “Do not worry, my dear, for I will protect you! I will use my greatest sciences to make sure that the Empress can never hurt you!”

But the Heiress was doubtful. “The Empress rules the entire sea, and has all the beings in it at her command! She could turn them all against me, if she wished. How could you hope to defend me against all the creatures in the whole sea?”

The prince promised that he would do everything in his power to protect his dear one, though the Heiress still did not believe that one troll could ever hope to fight so many on his own.

The prince, however, had no plans to fight the Empress’s army on his own. He retreated to his secret laboratory, situated where no one would ever find it - on a rock above the sea. There, he worked his most potent sciences, mixing together formulas and chemicals and atoms. He did science late into the day, even when the sun burned his eyes and he had to put on glasses to protect them, still he worked on.

Eventually, after three nights and three days of working, he had, with science, created life - a vast array of life, nearly enough to rival the Empress’s army of sea creatures.

Still, he had to put them somewhere where the empress would not find and destroy them. So he put them on land. These were the first land beasts.

He returned to the sea, to visit the Heiress and tell her of his creations. She was excited, and began to hope that she would not be killed after all. But she asked the prince, “How can you be sure that the beasts will defend me? For they are only beasts. The Empress commands trolls, too.” And again she was troubled.

The prince vowed to resolve this problem too. The Heiress bid him hurry, for she had heard more of the plot, and learned that she was to be killed in only two nights.

The prince returned to his secret laboratory, but had even less time now. He worked his sciences on himself, this time, and from his work he produced a whole population of trolls.

But these trolls were imperfect and unfinished, because the prince did not have enough time to finish. Their blood did not have time to mature into its proper purple, so they were left with blood ranging across the spectrum. Though he hated for his Heiress to have to rely on such half-formed beings, he was out of time.

He returned to the sea, leading an invasion of his creations, just as the Empress bore down on the Heiress. The battle between the armies of the prince and the Empress was long and arduous, but eventually the Empress was slain. The heiress leapt into the prince’s arms, proclaiming her everlasting love.

As for the prince’s creations, he meant to destroy them once they had served their purpose. But the beasts and the imperfect trolls now numbered too many to easily kill. However, such creations could not be allowed to live amongst civilized beings. They were sent to the surface, to live on the land, until the prince could decide how best to dispose of them all.

He and the heiress - the new empress, now - were too busy filling buckets for the rest of their lives though so he never got around to it.

\----

**so you see fef thats wwhy you an i gotta get together**

**wwe wwere MADE for each other its obvvious to evveryone evven a bunch of ancient dead guys wwho wwrote legends**

**also thats wwhy equality is bullshit an i gotta kill all the landdwwellers**

**see it all makes sense noww doesnt it**

**-Eridan, I don’t t)(ink t)(at’s )(ow the legend actually goes.**

**wwhat are you talkin about a course it is**


End file.
